The 5 Best Drug Scares of 2013

Drug policy and rationality go together like hot fudge and anchovies. From marijuana to Salvia divinorum, from cocaine to "bath salts," from absinthe to Four Loko, panic precipitates and perpetuates prohibition. The process can be observed every day as activists, politicians, and yellow journalists conspire to keep the American public alarmed about the psychoactive substances other people are consuming. Sometimes their best efforts are inadequate, as illustrated by the marijuana stores that will start opening in Colorado next Wednesday. More often, horror stories about what happens when people are allowed to exercise dominion over their own minds and bodies help maintain support for the war on drugs and even to expand the list of enemies. Here are five of the year's most successful drug scares:

5. Red Bullshit

Red Bull GmbH

Reporters are suckers for the warning that energy drinks, safely consumed by millions of American every year, might kill you the next time you try them. That meme made my list of best drug scares last year, thanks mainly to the tireless fear mongering of New York Times reporter Barry Meier. This year the Monster Menace got a boost from a study that was widely cited as cause for alarm about energy drinks even though it did not document any harmful effects.

Using an MRI to scan the hearts of 18 subjects before and after they consumed an energy drink, researchers at the University of Bonn measured "significantly increased peak strain and peak systolic strain rates," indicating greater contractility, which is consistent with the observation that caffeine improves athletic performace. That result led to headlines such as "Energy Drinks Alter Heart Function, Study Shows" and "Warning: Study Shows Energy Drinks Can Change Your Heartbeat." The stories portrayed the study as worrisome, even though the effect it found is potentially beneficial.

A press release issued by the Radiological Society of North America encouraged the negative spin by quoting comments from a co-author of the study, radiologist Thomas Dorner, that ranged from misleading to flat-out wrong. "There are concerns about the products' potential adverse side effects on heart function, especially in adolescents and young adults, but there is little or no regulation of energy drink sales," Dorner said. "The amount of caffeine [in energy drinks] is up to three times higher than in other caffeinated beverages like coffee or cola. There are many side effects known to be associated with a high intake of caffeine, including rapid heart rate, palpitations, rise in blood pressure and, in the most severe cases, seizures or sudden death."

The implication was clear: Energy drinks pose a potentially deadly threat because they contain so much caffeine. Yet the drinks that Dorner and his colleagues gave their subjects contained 32 milligrams of caffeine per 100 milliliters, compared to 76 milligrams per 100 milliliters for Starbucks coffee. In other words, Starbucks coffee contains more than twice as much caffeine per milliliter as energy drinks, as opposed to one-third as much, as Dorner suggested. Dorner's whopper reinforced the general message that energy drinks, although objectively safer than coffee, are somehow scarier, possibly because of the shiny cans.

Next:Acid kills?

Foundation for a Drug-Free World

4. Acid Redux

Last March police in Charleston, West Virginia, accused Todd Honaker of killing his wife by dropping acid with her. The Charleston Gazette-Mail said Renee Honaker's death would be "the first reported acid-related fatality in the state and one of the few documented globally." That was literally true, since zero is as few as you can get, and no one has ever died of an LSD overdose.

Instead the tests detected an NBOMe compound, possibly 25I-NBOMe, which is often sold on blotter paper and passed off as LSD. The drug information website Erowid lists seven fatalities reportedly linked to 25I-NBOMe, which was first synthesized in 2003 and "has nearly no history of human use prior to 2010, when it first became available online." Erowid warns: "25-I-NBOMe is extremely potent. It should not be snorted! Insufflating 25-I-NBOMe appears to have led to several deaths in the last year and a number of hospitalizations."

If Renee Honaker was killed by an overdose of an unfamiliar, little-tested substitute for nontoxic LSD, her death is yet another example of how prohibition makes drug use more dangerous. It creates a black market where consumers have a hard time verifying that they are getting what they think they are getting, and it steers people away from relatively safe, well-studied drugs toward novel ones with unknown hazards. Instead of charging her husband with murder, Roane County Prosecuting Attorney Josh Downey should reflect on his own role in enforcing laws that lead to entirely predictable tragedies like this one.

Prohibitionists commonly warn that it's dangerous even to discuss legalizing marijuana, whether for medical or general use, because such talk sends "the wrong message" to the youth of America, encouraging them to smoke pot. If so, you might expect that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, approved by voters more than a year ago, would have a noticeable impact on marijuana use by teenagers. Yet the latest data from the government-sponsored Monitoring the Future Study, released earlier this month, indicate that teenagers observed the momentous events in Colorado and Washington, absorbed the deleterious message supposedly sent by legalization, and continued smoking pot at pretty much the same rates as before.

Looking at annual, past-month, and "daily" use (meaning use on 20 or more of the previous 30 days) among eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders, you can see there were some slight increases and slight decreases, but none of the changes was stastistically significant. "These findings should put to rest any claims that reforming marijuana laws and discussing the benefits will somehow contribute to more teens using marijuana," said Mason Tvert, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project. "It's time for prohibition supporters to stop hiding behind teens when debating marijuana policy."

It is true that marijuana use among teenagers has been "drifting higher in recent years" (as the University of Michigan researchers who oversee the Monitoring the Future Study put it). But this upward drift began around 2007, whereas the first medical marijuana law (California's) was enacted in 1996. In between, past-month use among high school seniors went up and down, but it did not exceed the 1996 rate until 2011, 15 years after cannabis was first legalized for medical use. It certainly does not look like marijuana reform is driving increases in adolescent pot smoking. If you dig a little deeper, comparing cannabis consumption trends in states with and without medical marijuana laws, there is little evidence that such legislation boosts pot smoking by teenagers.

Next: Vaping gives politicians the vapors.

FIN e-cigarette ad

2. No Smoke, Yet Ire

Last September the CDC noted with alarm that the percentage of teenagers who had tried electronic cigarettes doubled between 2011 and 2012. "Many teens who start with e-cigarettes may be condemned to struggling with a lifelong addiction to nicotine and conventional cigarettes," CDC Director Tom Frieden worried. In a Medscapeinterview a few weeks later, Frieden suggested that fear had already materialized, asserting that "many kids are starting out with e-cigarettes and then going on to smoke conventional cigarettes."

The CDC's data, which came from the 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), did not support that claim. In fact, nine out of 10 high school students who reported vaping in the previous month were already cigarette smokers, suggesting that the increase in e-cigarette consumption might signal successful harm reduction. Last month the CDC reported additional NYTS data that further undermine Frieden's claim, showing that smoking among teenagers fell as vaping rose.

Between 2011 and 2012, when the share of middle school students who reported using e-cigarette in the previous month rose from 0.6 percent to 1.1 percent, the share reporting past-month consumption of conventional cigarettes fell from 4.3 percent to 3.5 percent. Among high school students, past-month e-cigarette use rose from 1.5 percent to 2.8 percent, while past-month consumption of tobacco cigarettes fell from 15.8 percent to 14 percent. Although these trends do not necessarily mean e-cigarettes are responsible for the decline in smoking (which is part of a long-term trend), the numbers hardly seem consistent with the story Frieden is eager to tell: that the availability of e-cigarettes is leading to more smoking than would otherwise occur.

Does the gateway effect Frieden fears—a switch from e-cigarettes to conventional cigarettes among people who otherwise would never smoke—show up after high school? Not according to a recent survey of college students, in which only 3.3 percent said e-cigarettes were the first form of nicotine they'd tried. Of those, only one (2.3 percent) later started smoking conventional cigarettes. "It didn't seem as though it really proved to be a gateway to anything," the lead researcher said.

Yet politicians calling for a crackdown on e-cigarettes commonly cite the CDC's survey numbers, ignoring the continued decline in smoking by teenagers. When the New York City Council voted to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places last week, one of the main rationales was preventing an increase in underage smoking. Councilman James Gennaro, a co-sponsor of the ban, warned that "just seeing people smoking things that look identical to cigarettes in subway cars, colleges and public libraries will tend to re-normalize the act of smoking and send the wrong message to kids." As usual, the kids don't seem to be listening.

Next: You thought the cannibalism drug was bad…

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NYS

1. Krokodil Sightings

Last year my pick for top drug scare involved "bath salts," quasi-legal stimulants that supposedly turned a guy in Miami into a flesh-eating zombie (although it turned out that he had not actually consumed any of the drugs blamed for his vicious assault on a homeless alcoholic). Recently various media outlets have been hyping a drug that cuts out the middleman and does the flesh eating all on its own: krokodil, a homemade version of desomorphine that originated in Russia as a heroin substitute. Last September health officials in Arizona reported two cases of krokodil use there, which gave USA Today an excuse to recycle accounts of the drug's icky side effects under the headline "Flesh-Rotting 'Krokodil' Drug Emerges in USA."

"When it's injected," USA Today reported, "the concoction destroys a user's tissue, turning the skin scaly and green like a crocodile. Festering sores, abscesses and blood poisoning are common….The average life expectancy among krokodil addicts in Russia is two to three years, according to Time, which called the narcotic 'the most horrible drug in the world.' Gangrene and amputations are common, and the toxic mix dissolves jawbones and teeth."

But the tone of the USA Today story was almost restrained compared to the comments of a Drug Enforcement Administration official quoted by the Deseret News in October. "While methamphetamine and heroin are guaranteed to give you a slow, painful death, if you want to speed up the process, take this drug," said Sue Thomas, supervisory special agent for Utah. "If you just want to speed up and horrify the death process a little more, take this drug. It will rot you from the inside out, leaving you with gaping wounds that will leave bones exposed, horrible abscesses, and it's a horrific death."

The effects described in these accounts are not caused by desomorphine, which was patented in 1932 and marketed as a painkiller in Switzerland under the brand name Permonid, with nary a report of rotting patients from the inside out. Rather, the abscesses and necrosis are caused by a combination of caustic contaminants and unsanitary injection practices. What drives Russian heroin addicts to take such risks? According to USA Today, "krokodil became popular in Russia because heroin can be difficult to obtain and is expensive." Meanwhile, codeine, the opiate used to produce krokodil, is relatively cheap and available over the counter there.

Since neither of those conditions holds in the United States, where heroin is plentiful and codeine can be legally purchased only with a prescription, why would krokodil ever gain a following here? It almost certainly hasn't. One krokodil sighting after another has proven to be spurious.

The DEA says it is "tracking the nationwide reports of alleged abuse of the controlled substance desomorphine that is found in the drug krokodil, a homemade substitute for heroin invented and used in rural Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan." The agency is "investigating the matter by acquiring samples alleged to contain desomorphine, interviewing drug abusers, and monitoring intelligence reports." But "to date, none of our forensic laboratories has analysed an exhibit found to contain desomorphine."

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I would like to see the gov’t declare a war on war…I’ll bet there are some government stooges who could do that with a straight face too.

Of course if we prefer to benefit society in the long term we should lobby for a war on peace.

Now those are just silly. But if we’re to have hope for the end of the war on (some) drugs we need something to keep the prohibitionist parasites and their sycophants from getting into real mischief.

When I consider that the sycophants of prohibition are just none too bright and are very easily confused, I can only come up with one solution: the war on bugs. Since bugs rhymes with drugs and has the same number of syllables that will make for a more orderly facilitation of the transition by not confusing the sycophants more than is humanly possible to avoid.

The prohibitionist parasites will not lose any job security since this is yet another futile war. There’s actually a darn good possibility it will increase their potential for employment because there are so many damn bugs. Also, bugs don’t vote, picket, have any Constitutionally protected rights, or know how to petition the government for redress of grievances. The only potential problem here may be family loyalty or professional courtesy since many bugs are also parasites.

Mandatory disclosure of personal interest: I may or may not support the proposal as a result of my genuine, deep seated hatred of insects. But unless I’m grossly mistaken nobody really likes bugs.

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First we work on getting government completely out of the health care business, shrinking its regulatory powers to something the founders may actually recognize, and instilling a sense of personal responsibility back into the population… THEN we can talk about legalizing all the drugs you want.

Because any other way is just putting the cart before the horse. I have no interest in legalizing something which, in our current political climate, will quickly become an entitlement and then a ‘civil right’ with all the associated taxes, costs and regulations that go along with it.

Legalizing drugs today will absolutely equate to the government giving away ‘free’ drugs tomorrow. A lot needs to change before its even worth discussing.

I’ve got a better idea, thom, why don’t you bite me? Why in the world would anyone give any significant consideration to the priorities of a delusional narcissist? You’ve got bats in the belfry if you think that the basic human right of self determination is less important than your petty, short sighted beliefs.

Are you seriously unaware that the war on (some) drugs is the foundation for the government control you claim to abhor? If Constitutional rights were money you’d be stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. If brains were dynamite you wouldn’t have enough to blow your friggin’ nose.

Don’t expect me to lend you a hand with your pet peeves as long as you think that my essential liberty which is the birthright of all Americans isn’t important.

I know how people like you think. E.g. thom says, “Hey lady, I’ve examined a cross section of buses used in public transportation. Every seat is exactly the same, front and rear, so just move to the back and kiwitcherbitchin! You should be grateful that you have reserved seating anywhere on the bus.”

You could prove me wrong. Just tell me where to go to get my free government paid for booze and cigarettes. Do you even have a clue of the total sum of money that our government has borrowed, squandered, and has yet to pay back in prosecuting the war on (some) drugs boondoggle?

No, it produces crime because the government makes it a crime. People who do drugs are going to do drugs whether they’re legal or not – making drugs accessible and reasonably affordable will keep the crime rate down. Yes, it’s really that simple. We were supposed to learn something from Prohibition; you know, when the government made alcohol illegal? Gangsters became kind of scarce after it was repealed.

Interesting little tidbit to go along with that: Prohibition actually made it EASIER for teenagers to obtain alcohol. Because those criminals the government created when they made it illegal didn’t care who they sold it to. Whoops.

Transform’s outstanding book titled, After the War on Drugs: Blueprints for Regulation, provides specific proposals for how drugs could be regulated in the real world. The book is available for free online. If you would like to read it then here it is: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint download.htm

Researchers led by Professor David Nutt, a former chief drugs adviser to the British government, asked drug-harm experts to rank 20 drugs (legal and illegal) on 16 measures of harm to the user and to wider society, such as damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs and crime. Alcohol scored 72 out of a possible 100, far more damaging than heroin (55) or crack cocaine (54). It is the most harmful to others by a wide margin, and is ranked fourth behind heroin, crack, and methamphetamine (crystal meth) for harm to the individual.

TheAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicinefound that in the U.S. alone, an estimated 79,000 lives are lost annually due to “excessive” drinking. The study estimates that the overall cost of excessive drinking by Americans is $223.5 billion each year.

1) Not all drugs are the same. Most of the drugs known as psychedelics are non-addictive and some have been shown to have anti-addictive properties. When you say: “ban drugs because they are a net ill” you are making the assumption that all drugs look like meth or heroin. Psilocybin mushrooms (to pick an example, although there are others I could choose) are, in fact, more illegal than meth, and yet, there’s really no downside to their use.

2) Addiction looks different from what you think it is. I know drug addicts, I’ve worked with them. The vast majority of them have jobs (some even have good jobs and contribute to society). They need their drug to function (much like I’m sure you need caffeine). Once they’ve gotten their fix and are no longer going through acute withdrawl, they are totally functional human beings, and often go off to work.

3) The vast majority of users of any drug (even the ‘scary’ ones) aren’t addicts.

this is idiotic. ive done pretty much every drug that exists, and none of them has been addictive for me the way alcohol is. of course im not saying that would be true for everyone (the drug itself is only half of how it affects you; you’re the other half), but if you could just walk into a store down the street and buy heroin for what it’s actually worth it would not inspire anywhere near the kind of crime it does now. but go on believing the propaganda if you want i guess

For those of you who, like Ann N, who are still living in some strange parallel universe, one where prohibition actually works, here is part of the testimony of Judge Alfred J Talley, given before the Senate Hearings of 1926:

“For the first time in our history, full faith and confidence in and respect for the hitherto sacred Constitution of the United States has been weakened and impaired because this terrifying invasion of natural rights has been engrafted upon the fundamental law of our land, and experience has shown that it is being wantonly and derisively violated in every State, city, and hamlet in the country.”

“It has made potential drunkards of the youth of the land, not because intoxicating liquor appeals to their taste or disposition, but because it is a forbidden thing, and because it is forbidden makes an irresistible appeal to the unformed and immature. It has brought into our midst the intemperate woman, the most fearsome and menacing thing for the future of our national life.”

“It has brought the sickening slime of corruption, dishonor, and disgrace into every group of employees and officials in city, State, and Federal departments that have been charged with the enforcement of this odious law.”

In just one instance alone, in 2009, more than 100 people died after drinking toxic alcohol in the Indian state of Gujarat (India’s only dry state) and another 200 victims were hospitalized. The Indian police raided 1,200 liquor dens and arrested more than 800 people as they searched for those responsible for the illegal alcohol.

The government may not distribute free alcohol and cigarettes, but we sure as hell pay hundreds of billions of dollars every year for federally mandated treatment and rehabilitation for alcoholics and smokers… the cost of which will only rise as the government gets deeper and deeper into the business of providing healthcare as a ‘civil right’.

And we already have entrenched government-funded programs directed at drug addicts, many of which include ‘free’ needles and other paraphernalia, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Do you honestly think that with outright legalization, those programs will NOT grow exponentially? That the costs associated with medical care and all the various support services for addicts will not skyrocket? What planet are you living on?

Drug legalization is a bullshit issue for libertarians. It makes them sound edgy around the local college campus and is easier to talk about than constitutional originalism, but that’s about it.

So as I said before, work on getting government out of healthcare and out of people’s lives in general, THEN talk about legalizing drugs. Any other way will have the exact opposite effect on society that a true libertarian would be interested in seeing.

We can either ask the Tooth Fairy to stop people taking drugs or we can decide to regulate them properly. Prohibition is not regulation, it’s a hideous nightmare for all of us.

Because Drug cartels will always have an endless supply of ready cash for wages, bribery and equipment, no amount of tax money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safe again?only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?

Debating whether a particular drug is harmless or not is missing the whole point. Is marijuana dangerous? Is Cocaine dangerous? Is Alcohol dangerous? It simply doesn’t matter if they are or not; If it’s not directly hurting you and you forbid it, then you can be sure that it WILL create unforeseen circumstances, which WILL have an adverse affect on ALL our wellbeing.

If you support prohibition then you’ve helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.

If you support prohibition you’ve helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.

If you support prohibition you’ve helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords.

If you support prohibition you’ve helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.

In addition to the many economical and societal costs of prohibition, it has a long history of driving the spread of harder or more dangerous drugs. Certain people wish/need to get high. If we attempt to block their access to the drugs they want, they will find ever more harmful ways to get them.

MARIJUANA to dangerous synthetic concoctions ?such as AM-2201, JWH-018, JWH-073, or HU-210, (called Spice or K2 etc.) POPPIES to morphine, to heroin, to Desomorphine (dihydrodesoxymorphine, Permonid, street name KROKODIL) COCA to cocaine, to crack, to Paco/Kete/Bazuco/Pitillo. EPHEDRA to ephedrine, to methamphetamine. MAGIC MUSHROOMS, PEYOTE or AYAHUASCA TEA to synthetics with similar hallucinogenic and/or amphetamine-like properties like ECSTACY (MDMA), to PMMA, to MDPV, to 2CB/designers.

At every step the reasons for the rise in popularity of the new form of the drug are one or more of the following:

* It may be easier to smuggle. * It may be more addictive, thus compelling the buyer to return more frequently. * It may be cheaper to produce, therefore yielding more profit. * Like a game of “whack a mole” a shutdown of producers in one area will mean business opportunities for another set of producers with a similar product.

So how come so many of us have been deluded into believing that big government is the appropriate response to non-traditional consensual vices?

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